With his ‘thrilling vocal heroics’ and ‘magnetic stage presence’, Stuart Skelton is one of the great tenors of his generation, a regular in all the major international opera houses. The Australian singer is joined by charismatic Latvian accordionist Ksenija Sidorova for the climax of the 2021 festival – a musical celebration like no other.

Bach’s crowning masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion combines moments of extraordinary fragility and tenderness with raw choral power and explosive jubilation, bitter grief with passages of consolation. With double chorus and orchestra, its scope and ambition is vast – a piece made for the Royal Albert Hall. Following on from their gripping account of Handel’s Theodora in 2018, period-instrument ensemble Arcangelo and Director Jonathan Cohen return to the Proms, joined by a glittering line-up of soloists including Roderick Williams and rising star Stuart Jackson.

The Sinfonia of London makes its much-anticipated official concert debut under John Wilson, who re-established the ensemble in 2018. Following on from their award-winning recording, this orchestral ‘army of generals’ brings with it Korngold’s stirring, filmic Symphony in F sharp. It’s part of a musical bird’s-eye view of 19th- and 20th-century Vienna that also includes the overture to Die Fledermaus and Ravel’s dizzying La valse.

Sir John Eliot Gardiner makes his 60th Proms appearance directing his own Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in Handel’s vividly theatrical Dixit Dominus – a concerto for choir that blazes with virtuosity and colour. It’s paired with Bach’s Easter cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden – a fiery, dramatic setting of Luther’s popular hymn. Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg is the soloist in the young Handel’s cantata of praise to the Virgin Mary, Donna, che in ciel, containing music the composer later borrowed for his opera Agrippina.

Blending soul, jazz, art-pop and spoken word, singer-songwriter Moses Sumney defies traditional categories. His ever-evolving voice has channelled political rage and emotional optimism into everything from sprawling orchestral tracks to electronica. Here he performs songs from his albums Aromanticism and græ in new orchestral arrangements, masterminded by Jules Buckley.

The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and Principal Guest Conductor Ilan Volkov pair Beethoven’s dramatic concert aria ‘Ah! perfido’ with the Second Symphony – a work whose vitality and ‘smiling’ mood belie the private struggles and despair of a composer wrestling with hearing loss – with a new commission from celebrated American composer George Lewis. This world premiere blends a conventional orchestra with spatialised electronics, exploiting the unique space of the Royal Albert Hall to create, in Lewis’s words, ‘a medium for meditation on what processes of decolonisation might sound like’.

The Chineke! Orchestra returns for its fourth visit to the Proms, celebrating diversity in composers as well as performers. Black British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s overture to his popular cantata based on the tale of a Native American leader quotes the spiritual ‘Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen’. There are further meetings of African and European musical styles in Nigerian composer Fela Sowande’s African Suite and the piano concerto by Florence Price, the first female African-American composer to win renown in America. By contrast, Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony, written as a 20-year old student of Stanford at London’s Royal College of Music, reveals the influence of his hero, Dvo?ák.

The London Symphony Orchestra and Sir Simon Rattle mark 2021’s Stravinsky anniversary with a series of symphonic snapshots. We follow Stravinsky’s view of the symphony from the experimental, colour-blocked ‘ritual’ of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, through the transitional Symphony in C – reflecting both the composer’s European past and his American future – to arrive at the bold Symphony in Three Movements.

British saxophonist, composer, DJ and bandleader Nubya Garcia is one of the brightest of a new generation of jazz talent, drawing comparison with greats such as Sonny Rollins and Dexter Gordon. Named a ‘major voice’ by The New York Times, she has devised a brand of ‘eclectic, danceable, political jazz’ that draws on influences from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Tonight marks her Proms debut.

A host of British opera stars join Ben Glassberg and the BBC Philharmonic for a night rich in emotion and drama. After a year of lockdowns and social distancing, the themes of isolation and loneliness as well as the joy of reunion have particular poignancy in excerpts from much-loved operas including Handel’s Rodelinda, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and Puccini’s La bohème.